[X] My Assistant

[Steffen]

Which device made the Huygens probe spin underneath its satellite?
I read that's the way how 360° images were made during descent...

[Big_Gazza]

These sections of Huygens descent imaging triads (from the near-vertical camera) look like a droplet in the process of settling under gravity and draining away. Could it be either moisture (liquid methane) from the surface thrown up from the probes impact, or maybe condensation on the inside of the lens caused by cooling effect of low ambient temperature?

If the former, surely this proves that liquid does indeed lie just under the surface on the "dry lakebeds".

I'm sure these images have caused debate before, but I can't find mention anywhere.



P.S I've looked long and hard for anything that looks like an aquatic lifeform gasping for its life as its moisture drains away, but no luck i'm afraid!!

[edstrick]

Big Gazza: "I'm sure these images have caused debate before, but I can't find mention anywhere. "

I'm pretty sure those images are highly out-of-focus data taken after landing.

The lower-left portion of the image is the out of focus surface. The upper right portion of the image expands from frame to frame and appears to show the structure of the fiber-optic bundle that routed the image from the focal plane of the downward looking lens to the CCD. It is entirely confined to the brightest part of each frame, and I think is the negative image of a flat-field calibration frame subtracted from the raw data. Where the raw data is within the dynamic range of the camera, the texture of the fiber-optic bundle in the raw data and in the calibration data cancel out. The brightest portions of the image appear to have been saturated in the raw data. There, the fiber-optic texture is not present and in the decalibrated image, the texture is put into what should be featureless saturated data.